


Working Holiday (The Release the Kraken Remix)

by NancyBrown



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Remix, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-02 23:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15806754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown
Summary: Death takes a holiday. He's not the only one.





	Working Holiday (The Release the Kraken Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiraMira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Death Takes a Working Holiday](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5069317) by [MiraMira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/pseuds/MiraMira). 



Determining the origin of any one event on the Disc was next to impossible. Cause and Effect were difficult enough siblings on boring, continents-nailed-on-by-gravity round worlds. The Discworld perched like a lunch tray on a waiter's tireless arm, although rather than the waiter, said perching was performed on the back of four giant elephants, and instead of walking through a busy restaurant, they stood on the back of the Great A'Tuin, the star turtle swimming through space. In other words, the Disc was very little like a lunch tray at all, but it did bustle with continents and oceans, mountains, valleys, magic, trolls, dwarves, golems, and most odd of them all, humans. On a planet this unlikely, Cause and Effect's family squabbles waged over centuries, one happening before the other so often that most sensible Disc physicists long ago threw up their hands and went to the pub, where they've been playing darts ever since.

'Origin' didn't have a prayer of being discovered. But on the Disc, even those with no prayers left have small gods to pray to, and one of them, when asked, might hold up a copy of "What I Did On My Holidays." The gods alone knew what had possessed Twoflower to take the Disc's first vacation, but that was where it started for everyone else.

***

Ponder knew this would take work. Fortunately or unfortunately, Ponder Stibbons was also one of two members of Unseen University's staff who ever put in a full day's work, in his own opinion. He would never be so vulgar as to say this out loud, and if he were and he did, it wasn't as though anyone would pay attention except for the multitude of the university's cooks and the housekeepers, who might have a bone either to pick with him or to leave inside his dinner. Of the wizard side of the UU employment equation, Ponder and the Librarian nearly had the run of the place to themselves. Ponder was used to working, and working for this cause would be even better.

"What kind of holy day?" Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully wore the frowning, suspicious expression he always did when presented with something new. "Too many holy days on the calendar as it is. Last Tuesday was sacred to Blind Io, Om, and Anoia all at the same time, and this week the Nugganites are fasting again." Ridcully's face changed. "The whole lot around here could do with a fast, if you ask me. Keep them off their meat for a week, then they'd be keen."

Ponder smiled the smile of a man who'd learned to keep an emergency pie in his room when the Archchancellor went on another one of his fitness kicks. "Not a holy day, Archchancellor. A holiday. A trip somewhere warm and pleasant for an extended visit." Please don't mention Fourecks. Please don't mention Fourecks.

Ridcully frowned again. "We took one of those when we went through the window and wound up in Fourecks."

Ponder said, "Ah yes, but this time we will not travel through a magical window in someone's curiously empty bedroom. This time we will travel by coach. We will take the senior faculty for a retreat by the ocean and convene as peers."

"That only frightens the fish away." But there was a glint in his eye, thinking about fishing. "Giant fish in the ocean, isn't there? Can you picture a kraken mounted over my desk?"

Ponder could, unfortunately. "Then you're agreed?"

"To a holiday by the sea? With the entire senior staff? Alone?"

"Not entirely alone. Of course we'll need some support staff. Also," Ponder said, pulling out the scroll that had captured his imagination, "there's a full resort." He showed Ridcully the woodcuts of the cheerful lodge beside the sea, boasting surf, sand, fun, relaxation, and mildly suggestive outlines of young women, tiny on the illustrated beachfront. The phrase "all meals included" caught his eye. That had caught Ponder's as well. Small woodcut women were all well and good, but a wizard knew where he stood with his dinner. The senior staff would arrive at the resort with fork and knife ready.

"When did you think we ought to go?"

"I've already booked our reservations."

***

"No," Rincewind said instantly, and closed the door. Ponder was ready for this, and had inserted his foot, which stung as the Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography continued to push.

"I'm afraid it's mandatory."

"Which means half the staff will skip it, sleep through it, or spend so much time squabbling about it they forget to go. Mark me down as one of those." Rincewind kept pushing.

"Really, Professor! Most people would jump at the chance of lounging in the warm sand for a few days, taking a break from it all."

Most people would. Rincewind was not most people. "You say that as though we won't get there, order drinks, and instantly be beset by eldritch abominations from the Dungeon Dimensions!"

"Yes?" said Ponder, confused.

"Exactly!" Rincewind said, and managed to get the door shut. He'd had enough of warm holidays by the seaside to last him every lifetime those Hubward religions said he'd be reincarnated through. Fifty thousand years from now, Rians Wand, a humble space kelp farmer on the moon who kept lunar dragons as livestock would be offered a free holiday with drinks, warm sand, and surf, and he would be beset by screaming terrors.

Safe on the other side of the door, he listened, hoping for Stibbons to go away. He liked the young man well enough. Professor Stibbons was the youngest member of the faculty, risen to his position during Rincewind's long absence, and as such, less inclined to view his fellow wizard as "that fool with the misspelled hat who can't work any spells" and more inclined to recall Rincewind had saved the world a handful of times. Stibbons treated him as a colleague rather than a nuisance. Still. It paid to be safe.

He heard Stibbons walk away. "That was close," he said, sitting on his bed with a shudder. His Luggage sat in the corner, watching him. "You know we would have been sucked into some adventure again."

The Luggage said nothing, but it did stand and stretch its many tiny feet. Without communicating directly, it indicated to Rincewind that Luggage was wasted in a wardrobe, or restricted to chasing down rats in the University. A Luggage was born to travel.

"By all means," Rincewind said, indicating the door. "I'm not stopping you. Send me a postcard."

The Luggage glared at him, despite having no eyes.

"You're the one who decided to follow me everywhere. You want to go on holiday, go."

The glare increased.

"It's going to be terrible." Rincewind's stomach clenched. "Something will go horribly wrong. It always does."

But he knew he'd lost.

***

"Does Death often take a holiday?" he asked Susan. The smirk on his face told her he was more in a Lobsang mood today rather than a Jeremy. Her beau's fractured nature made conversations rather more complex than would otherwise be typical in most relationships. She was never sure if she was dealing with the thief, the clockmaker, the anthropomorphic embodiment of Time itself, or the boyfriend. They were all the same person, which made it even more difficult.

"No, and when he does, it rarely goes well. I told you, that's how I found out who I was."

"But he's not running away this time. Is he?" There was half a tremor of worry. Not only was it bad business for the rest of the anthropomorphic personifications on the Disc if one of them Got Ideas, he also had to worry about the effect on Death's understudy. Whenever Death became more human, Susan became distinctly less so. He himself was only slightly human. One day, they'd both shake away the last of their mortality to embrace their other selves, and they both knew they'd lose something important when they did.

"Can you talk him out of it?"

"I'd rather he go and get it out of his system and come back. Otherwise he'll be distracted, and you know how that goes."

Six months ago, Death had become obsessed with, of all things, a game. In Ankh-Morpork, someone had invented a box where sweets were dropped from the top and crashed into each other. The more sweets that broke, the higher the points. This game had swept through the city like another fire, until Sergeant von Überwald of the City Watch had investigated and discovered it was a scam by a gang of rogue Tooth Fairies. Before she'd shut down the gang, Death had spent hours caught up in the delightful smashing game, so much so he'd actually missed Appointments of his own. The zombie population of Ankh-Morpork had written up protest letters in the Times.

Susan sighed. "I've promised to keep an eye on things while he's gone."

"I'm sure it will be fine." It was an empty platitude, spoken by learned rote, and Jeremy in every way.

***

Ridcully surveyed his belongings as he unpacked in the suite. Two crossbows, four fishing poles, three harpoons, his crossbow fishing spear, nets of varying weaves and sizes, sealed container of lures separated into two compartments ('tied' and 'still wriggling'), gutting knife, scaling knife, spare scaling knife, boning knife, fishhook retriever (Stibbons had rigged this up after their visit to Lancre, with a long string and a small bit of rock filled with the love of iron), two spools of spare fishing line as big as his fist, small scale, telescopic large scale to be assembled on the beach, Wow-wow sauce, and a small crate that served as both a chair and a means of keeping drinks cool inside.

He gave the satisfied grin of a man who knew his holiday would be spent in ensuring endangered species kept their endangered status.

He wondered if he should have packed any clothes as well.

***

In an adjoining suite, booked under a name the concierge couldn't quite remember, another guest looking through his own belongings. Scythe. Spare robe with humorous palm tree and hibiscus flower designs. Sugar cubes for the horse. A book Susan had recommended ("Death At Hogswatch: a Murder Mystery"). Quite a lot of cat hair covering all of this, although that had not so much been packed as it came along everywhere with him these days.

Death grinned. Then again, he always did.

Some time away from the Duty, while also being on call for a particular job, was just what he needed. In the pocket of his current robe, a lifetimer adorned with rather an uncomfortable array of tentacles hissed to itself, sand grains counting down the time for the Great Kraken's appointment with destiny at the end of a crossbow fishing spear.

He changed his robe into the more festive one, then wandered through the lodge, noting the tropical themes of the décor. Palm trees were key. Also hibiscus. Death felt as though he were more camouflaged than his usual manner, where the eye of the beholder watered and ignored him.

Down by the beach, he headed towards the refreshment stand, desiring a sticky drink with a paper umbrella. He nodded companionably to the wizard he passed as he walked by. The wizard gaped at him. Susan had mentioned she'd seen something in the paper about the University staff taking a holiday of their own. Perhaps they'd be up to a friendly game of shuffleboard later.

HELLO, RINCEWIND.

Rincewind screamed and ran away. Soon his scream was taken up by several other members of the faculty. Death couldn't frown, but he could sigh. Perhaps shuffleboard was too much to ask.

He noticed the Archchancellor ignoring his fellows, arming himself with various tools of animal destruction. Oblivious to Death and the screaming wizards, Ridcully marched out along the pier towards the deeper waters, shouting, "I'm coming for yer, yer bastard!"

The bartender faced Death with a shiny-faced terrified rictus of his own as Death ordered his drink. He glanced at the running wizards, and again at Ridcully heading out to fish.

MAKE IT TO GO.


End file.
